Two years ago the growing evidence of climate crisis caused us to recognize the urgent need for massive innovation and investment in clean and sustainable uses of energy. The transformation required to address this global problem will be huge–replacing the inefficient capital equipment that powers the world will likely be the single largest economic opportunity of the 21st century. Such a change will not be easy, but we know it is possible. The Internet represents a similar disruptive burst of energy and creativity, where we helped visionary entrepreneurs create companies like America Online, Netscape,
Amazon
and
Google
.

To quickly scale up our green investing we built a network of experts to help identify and prosecute the most pressing problems and opportunities. We call it the Greentech Innovation Network (GIN).

For 35 years we have been assembling such networks of seasoned entrepreneurs and business and technical experts to help us quickly understand new industries and anticipate opportunities. These networks also help provide new ventures with the assistance they need to grow and become durable enterprises. We have developed such networks for areas as diverse as semiconductors, personal computing, the Internet and the life sciences. These innovation networks are a key ingredient in what we call “relationship capital.” There’s more to venture capital than a checkbook.

To launch GIN, we called several “spiders”–leaders highly connected in the green technology and policy worlds. We asked them to identify the best and brightest, people who could work together to hasten the pace of green innovation. GIN was thus built from a database of policymakers, scientists, inventors, entrepreneurs and executives and, most important, other spiders with additional rich webs of relationships.

We held our first GIN meeting in May 2006, bringing together the first 60 members of the network. We organized around five themes: electricity generation, electric use efficiency, transportation fuels, transportation efficiency and public policy.

Some key takeaways from this first meeting: Less than 5% of energy comes from clean renewables; more than half of all energy is wasted as unused heat or transmission losses; reducing greenhouse gases requires a focus not only on renewables and conservation but also on efficient transportation and, especially, on cleaning up emissions from coal. Critically important, also, is that breakthroughs are most likely to emerge at the intersection of disciplines–for example, the overlaps among physics, chemistry, biology and engineering. And there’s enormous potential for new discoveries at very small (nanometer-length) scales.

One of the big surprises at the meeting was to hear just how much policy matters. Many of the technical experts wandered out of their sessions to join the policy group to discuss how to accelerate innovation of green technologies. We designed GIN not as a conference where you sit and listen, but rather as a forum for open exchange leading to action. At the end of our first meeting one member, Bob Epstein, a Berkeley engineer who started the database company
Sybase
, said, “the single most important thing we must do is to encourage California policymakers to develop a market-based system of incentives and mandatory caps on greenhouse gases.” So in August of last year eight GIN members went to Sacramento and lobbied eight undecided legislators to vote in favor of the Global Warming Solutions Act. Seven of these eight voted in favor. California thereby became the first state to mandate a 25% reduction of CO2 by 2020.

To understand where innovation could improve energy efficiency, we created a technology-innovation map highlighting several dozen opportunities. In electricity generation, for example, we focused on renewables such as wind power (on both large and small scales) and solar power (both photovoltaic and thermal), as well as ways to sequester the CO2 generated by coal-fired power plants (for example, by pumping it deep underground). For each of these areas we then developed a network of technical and policy experts, GIN thus becoming a network of networks. All this was greatly aided by the fact that our partnership was already seeing hundreds of interesting green-tech business plans each year, giving us the opportunity to dig deep and use our networks to evaluate real venture plans.

GIN has helped us identify key technical trends: the use of nano-materials for the inorganic catalysis of chemical reactions; the harnessing of previously known but unexploited nanometer-scale physical effects (such as quantum confinement in nanowires); ways (using both software and hardware) to make buildings more energy efficient; reduction of power in computers, both personal and server farms; and the use of genetic engineering to turn microbes into chemical factories.

Look at the positive effects that networks and overlapping disciplines are having on Amyris Biotechnologies, a three-year-old company in Emeryville, Calif., which we funded in 2006. In creating Amyris, UC, Berkeley chemical and biological engineering professor Jay Keasling brought together three other founders, with backgrounds in bacteriology, biophysics and chemical engineering. Its breakthrough process to make artemisinin, an important antimalarial drug, more affordable has led to a radical new way to make better biofuels out of sugar feedstocks. The investors and founders then recruited the chief executive from BP North America, the vice president of business development from Pixar and the patent lawyer from a biotech company. At last count the company was recruiting talent from ten different industries, all by leveraging the networks of the founders, investors and employees.

We’ve also invested in Mascoma, which aims to make renewable fuels from sugars as well as from cheaper and more abundant cellulosic materials like corn stover and wood chips. Complementing the new renewable fuels will be exciting innovations in transportation efficiency, such as serial hybrids (electric vehicles with a small engine to help generate onboard electricity) and novel ways to strip weight out of automobiles without reducing their safety.

So far we have allocated $200 million to our Greentech initiative and have made 14 investments in green technology companies. We’ve made a difference in Sacramento and are moving on to lobby in Washington for sound national policy to regulate greenhouse gases. We’re continually updating our innovation maps to show what we know and don’t know.

The Greentech Innovation Network is meeting again in July. There’s a lot more to be done. We firmly believe that by using the power of networks and innovation we can help move our economy much more quickly to a renewable and efficient future.